Fiction Books

Jean Rhys is widely credited for exposing issues of gender, nationality, race, and class in technically sophisticated, arresting narratives. Her lifelong exploration of the dynamics of the human psyche has, however, gone unrecognized. This examination places Rhys’ fiction for the first time within the context of theories that reflect the interrelated perspectives of modern psychoanalysis. In clarifying accounts of many approaches that are new to literary scholars, as well as those that display the rich legacy of Freudian thought, Simpson shows that the paradigms of psychoanalysis illuminate the interpretation of Rhys’ art. With insightful references to the short stories and close readings of her five novels, this study testifies to a remarkable achievement as Rhys recorded, with unflinching candor, the powerful drama of emotional life.

Laura Caxton vowed never to face them again. The horror of what the vampires did is too close, the wounds too fresh. But when Jameson Arkeley, broken and barely recognizable, comes to her with an unfathomable, unholy discovery, her resolve crumbles. Arkeley leads Caxton to a tomb in Gettysburg recently excavated by a local archaeology professor. While the town, with its legendary role in the Civil War’s worst battle, is no stranger to cemeteries, this one is remarkably, eerily different. In it lie 100 coffins99 of them occupied by vampires, who, luckily, are missing their hearts. But one of the coffins is empty and smashed to pieces. Who is the missing vampire? Does he have access to the 99 hearts that, if placed back in the bodies of their owners, could reanimate an entire bloodthirsty army? How did the vampires end up there, undisturbed and undiscovered for 150 years? The answer lies in Civil War documents that contain sinister secrets about the newly found coffinssecrets that Laura Caxton is about to uncover as she is thrown into a deadly, gruesome mission of saving an entire town from a mass invasion of the undead. . . . From the Trade Paperback edition.

“A historian hoping to reconstruct the social world of all-black towns or the segregated black sections of other towns in the South finds only scant traces of their existence. In Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life, Tiffany Ruby Patterson uses the ethnographic and literary work of Zora Neale Hurston to augment the few official documents, newspaper accounts, and family records that pertain to these places hidden from history. Hurston’s ethnographies, plays, and fiction focused on the day-to-day life in all-black social spaces as well as “”the Negro farthest down”” in labor camps. Patterson shows how Hurston’s work complements the fragmented historical record, using the folklore and stories to provide a full description of these people of these towns as active human subjects, shaped by history and shaping their private world. Beyond the view and domination of whites in these spaces, black people created their own codes of social behavior, honor, and justice. In Patterson’s view Hurston renders her subjects faithfully and with respect for their individuality and endurance, enabling all people to envision an otherwise inaccessible world.”

Even in a city of long, tall beauties, psychologist Christina McMullen is used to getting hit on. But she’s definitely not accustomed to having a hit on her. Until the day a charming stranger shows up at her doorand someone guns him down right in front of her. For Chrissy, shootings and explosions are what pass for normal in her tempestuous relationship with sexy LAPD lieutenant Jack Rivera. But the real mayhem begins when her brother Pete blows in from the Windy City trailing clouds of trouble in the form of a pregnant girlfriend, borrowed money, and a mobster named D. Chrissy always said her family would be the death of herbut even L.A.’s sassiest shrink isn’t prepared for the truth behind her brother’s link to the dead strangeror the killer who threatens them both. From the Paperback edition.

I am Meredith Gentry, princess and heir apparent to the throne in the realm of faerie, onetime private investigator in the mortal world. To be crowned queen, I must first continue the royal bloodline and give birth to an heir of my own. If I fail, my aunt, Queen Andais, will be free to do what she most desires: install her twisted son, Cel, as monarch . . . and kill me. My royal guards surround me, and my best lovedmy Darkness and my Killing Frostare always beside me, sworn to protect and make love to me. But still the threat grows greater. For despite all my carnal efforts, I remain childless, while the machinations of my sinister, sadistic Queen and her confederates remain tireless. So my bodyguards and I have slipped back into Los Angeles, hoping to outrun the gathering shadows of court intrigue. But even exile isn’t enough to escape the grasp of those with dark designs. Now King Taranis, powerful and vainglorious ruler of faerie’s Seelie Court, has leveled accusations against my noble guards of a heinous crimeand has gone so far as to ask the mortal authorities to prosecute. If he succeeds, my men face extradition to faerie and the hideous penalties that await them there. But I know that Taranis’s charges are baseless, and I sense that his true target is me. He tried to kill me when I was a child. Now I fear his intentions are far more terrifying. From the Hardcover edition.

“BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Tess Gerritsen’s Die Again . Unknown bones, untold secrets, and unsolved crimes from the distant past cast ominous shadows on the present in the dazzling new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen. Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soilhuman, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time. . . . Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks of local resurrectioniststhose who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect. To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the cityfrom its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin poweron the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected . . . and who waits for his next lethal opportunity. With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden deftly interweaves the thrilling narratives of its nineteenth- and twenty-first century protagonists, tracing the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking. Bold, bloody, and brilliant, this is Tess Gerritsen’s finest achievement to date. “”An old mystery is crossed with a modern story in the latest from Gerritsen ( The Mephisto Club , 2006, etc.).Julia Hamill, newly divorced and still smarting, purchases an old house outside Boston. Determined to dig a garden, she instead finds the bones of a long-dead womanthe apparent victim of murderwhich starts her on a journey to ferret out the story behind her death. Julia connects with Henry, a no-nonsense 89-year-old with boxes of documents that once belonged to the now-deceased previous owner of Julia’s home. The two discover a mystery dating back to the 1830s. At the heart of it is a baby named Meggie, born to the beautiful but doomed Irish chambermaid, Aurnia. Married to a man who cares nothing for her, Aurnia lays dying in a maternity ward with her sister, Rose, at her side. Rose, a spirited 17-year-old, takes Meggie to protect her from Aurnia’s h”

H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale. Stephen King Lovecraft’s fiction is one of the cornerstones of modern horror. Clive Barker Some tales in this collection were inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, others he revised, two he co-authoredbut all bear the mark of the master of primordial terror. The Horror in the MuseumLocked up for the night, a man will discover the difference between waxen grotesqueries and the real thing. The Electric ExecutionerAboard a train, a traveler must match wits with a murderous madman. The TrapThis mirror wants a great deal more than your reflection. The Ghost-EaterIn an ancient woodland, the past comes to life with a bone-crunching vengeance. AND TWENTY MORE STORIES OF UNSPEAKABLE EVIL From the Trade Paperback edition.

The most powerful member of Savannah’s vampire community, William Cuyler Thorne, launches a personal quest for vengeance when he discovers that his wife and son, whom he had believed dead, have been transformed into the undead and are members of a malicious clan of European bloodsuckers that have abducted the young daughter of his voodoo priestess friend.

BEING DEAD CAN KILL A SOCIAL LIFE! For Lil Marchette, the owner of Manhattan’s premier dating service for vampires (and a dazzling denizen of the dark herself), death is all in a night’s work. Unfortunately, it’s going to take more than matching up vamps to pay the bills and fund Lil’s cosmetics addiction. Dare she add actual humans to the mix? Eager to diversify, she signs up for a popular dating show, Manhattan’s Most Wanted (MMW), to pitch her expertise to the perfect target audienceeligible women looking for eligible men. Of course Lil is trying to forget the one man she’d love to sink her own teeth into: Ty Bonner, the ultraseductive vamp who broke her heart after she gave him the hottest night of his afterlife. Problem is, she and Ty have an intense mental connection and she’s sensing he’s in deep trouble. Even worse, she soon finds herself heading for MMW’s grand finale (cameras are so not a vamp’s best friend). The race is on as Lil struggles to save Ty (and herself) before all hell breaks loose. Lil is a likable mix of Bridget Jones, Carrie Bradshaw and Draculacharming, sweet, stylish, with just a hint of fang. Parkersburg News and Sentinel From the Paperback edition.

In this explosive new thriller, one of the most incredible and frightening discoveries mankind has ever faced is about to surface. On an oil platform in the middle of the North Atlantic, a terrifying series of illnesses is spreading through the crew. When expert naval doctor Peter Crane is flown in, he finds his real destination is not the platform itself but Deep Storm: a top secret aquatic science facility, two miles below on the ocean floor. And as Crane soon learns, the covert operationhe finds thereis concealing something far more sinister than a medical mysteryand much more deadly.